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r/Fitness•
Focusi

One side of shoulder higher on OHP

I have been working out for a while and I keep making solid gains in all excercises bar 1.

The OHP where I am stuck at 45kg. About 105lbs for you americans and I can't seem to improve.

Every exercise I do be it compound or isolation I have gained very noticable strength but not the OHP.

Then today I noticed in the mirror while doing OHP that on of my shoulders tends to shoot up higher during the push. I asked a guy to watch and see if he could tell anything from an outside perspective but he couldn't tell.

Does anyone else have any experience with something similar?

I have watched plenty of videos on technique but it doesn't help

Posted Oct 12, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

212
Goatlov3rPowerlifting•

Try doing one arm ohp with a dumbbell

if you detect an imbalance, start doing one arm ohp like twice a week and stop when your weaker arms can't push more weight

imbalance will be fixed in a month or two

2
FocusiOP•

I did seated DB presses just to try and adress and identify that but I couldn't really notice a difference. I do however gain strength in those so I guess I will stick to those more

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corksacker•

how do you try to progress it? sl/ss? maybe its not so much a technique issue as bad programming.

my OHP was stuck around that weight too.

what I did was run 5/3/1 but instead of doing a cycle every 4 weeks i would do a cycle every 2 weeks and press 3x/1 deload, pressing twice a week. been doing this for a few months and made all kinds of gainz.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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FocusiOP•

I've tries many times to add 1,25kgs per side ~ 2.5lbs but can never get enough reps.

I also tend to get an uncomfortable feeling in only 1 of my shoulders

1
XaroykWeight Lifting•

You might want to consider buying microplates. They weigh 0.5kg each and can be used to increase the weight on the bar in small increments. They helped me overcome my OHP plateau and are just useful for progressive overload in general.

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the7heavens•

OHP is a bitch to increase for just about everyone, so you're not alone. Just keep doing a ton of pressing, overhead with barbells and dumbbells both to mix things up. Increase reps if you can't increase weight. Mix up rep/weight schemes.

As for one shoulder going higher, that just sounds like the result of one arm/shoulder being a bit stronger than the other. It's not a big deal, a bit of asymmetry is normal. Just keep your torso rigid, glutes tight, core engaged while pressing and you should be fine. The imbalance should even itself out over time.

In lifts that use relatively small muscles like the OHP, you have to resort to these techniques to improve, earlier than for lifts like the squat/deadlift because muscle growth by linear progress stalls way quicker.

1
Adito99•

I'm not much better, maxed out at 120 for 5 before shoulder issues made me stop. I spent months at 90 making no progress at all though. I think what did the trick was increasing my overall upper body strength. So more benching and dips. Kneeling landmine press is fantastic as well (and easier on the shoulders).

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Thegreatpatsby•

While this doesn't necessarily help the imbalance, when do you do your OHP in your routine? I've noticed if I do my bench/flies before my shoulder presses it dilutes the strength increase and makes it seem like those lifts are lagging. However, after switching on the second time through my PPL and doing shoulders before bench, I'm seeing a nice progression there as well.

For the imbalance, definitely try dumbbells for a bit.

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viperquick82•

Yeah I've switched to OHP before bench, as I felt more drained going to OHP after.... but going to bench after OHP is no problem.

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FocusiOP•

After deadlifts generally

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thedogmatrix•

If your shoulder raises it's because your lat is turned off and your trap is over-engaging to compensate, find some lat activation stuff to do beforehand, add more pullups and pull downs if you can

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